Amazon isn't just growing revenue anymore - it's growing profits

Amazon is on a streak, with four consecutive quarters posting a profit.

For investors in Amazon, who have become accustomed to the company's focus on revenue and user growth instead of on the bottom line, the newfound profits are a novelty.

Here's how Amazon's three main businesses compare in terms of operating margins, including stock-based compensation:

• North America: 3.5%
• International: 1.3%
• Amazon Web Services: 23.5%

In other words, Amazon's AWS cloud-computing business is very different in terms of profit potential versus its traditional bare-bones-margin e-commerce business. AWS posted operating income of $604 million on revenue of $2.6 billion in the first quarter.

What's really striking, though, is that Amazon nearly doubled AWS's operating margin year-over-year. AWS's margin went from 12.5% in Q1 of 2015 to 23.5%.

The improvement is basically the payoff from heavy data-center investment in 2015 and early 2016, says Mizuho analyst Neil Doshi.

Heavy lifting costs are done

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